Apparently it's for when you install PC-DOS on a drive partition. This actually makes sense in AIX's earlier history; PC-DOS (MS-DOS) support would be *mandatory* because the IBM PC was operating in every corner of the majority of businesses (even at IBM's own factories at the time).

The Ultimedia Services are probably not going to be compatible with the IntelliStations, but I still want to try forcing them to install. Don't know what it will do to AIX / doesn't matter if it bricks it as I can reinstall.

So for instance if I choose something like 'cas_client' I'll get the following error:"Not found on the installation Media"

Isn't it supposed to be on the Installation Media? Unless I'm supposed to know which disc of AIX 4.2.1 or 5.3 to put in, or if it's asking for something completely different. I couldn't see the RS/6000 Ultimedia Services option in the Fileset Bundle / but it has to be on that disc since I seen the UMS files. Plus, this is how the ThinkPad 850 gets all of its multimedia stuff-- otherwise it'd be totally useless since it's NOT a server. Maybe I should start the Installation process on the ThinkPad 850 so I understand these fileset bundles better?

By the way, I assume I would have to dismount the disc manually in the terminal each time, since once the disc is mounted AIX refuses to allow you to eject the disc.

This kills me in AIX. I have all the media, and I never know where to find the required filesets, and sometimes installations fail because of that. =(

ibmfiles wrote:Also apparently AIX 4 had an x86 emulator for DOS applications. I wonder if this can be transferred over to AIX 5 / now if that's the case would the DOS games respond to the OPL3 emulator on the CS4281 on FC 8244? Of course as mentioned, the Crystal FM on that chip is defected so a little surgery to get CS4236B soldered in would be necessary.

Shiunbird wrote:This kills me in AIX. I have all the media, and I never know where to find the required filesets, and sometimes installations fail because of that. =(

I need this in my life.

I figured out where I was going wrong with the "Select a Fileset Bundle" / you need to explicitly point towards packages with the files which are scattered all throughout the internet and (potentially) random discs that IBM bundled with systems. Not even getting into dependency hell with the throngs of libraries and RPM packages. Dealing with packages and libraries for basic functionality reminds me a lot of OS/2 Warp. If we want to joke about it, OS/2 PPC had quite mature multimedia functions, if only that could have been added to AIX.

There's also a few other things that could prompt the same menu if you're doing something else that I'm not.

The x86 emulator in AIX is virtually documented nowhere. It first appeared on the IBM RT as a physical 286 that would run side-by-side with the ROMP proc allowing x86 and ROMP applications run in the same session. I'm guessing future emulations were then done in software by the PowerPC CPUs themselves instead of a physical co-processor since that practice doesn't seem to have continued with the RS/6000s that I've seen (which the AS/400e-170s employed a similar technique as the IBM RT, they could run a mini Netfinity board in them--essentially two computers in one, I would have kept my AS/400e-170 if it had one or I could actually find one for sale).

So then I have a few things I'm wondering about AIX 4.2.1 / if you need to actually configure a discreet PC-DOS partition to run it in a dedicated session / or if it could run both instruction sets at the same time. *shrug* maybe I can find something out whenever I decide to work on the TP 850.

This is the slowest of the AIX ThinkPads with only a 66MHz CPU, so none of these games run exceptionally well (it only has 48MB of RAM, too, so that probably doesn't help).

Abuse was playable in pixel-doubled mode to the extent aiming with the nipple mouse can be considered playable Otherwise, it was decent in single pixel.

The original 0.92 Quake (xquake) was molasses even at single pixel. It was just barely useable. Pixel-doubling was atrociously bad. This was even with sound cranked all the way down to 11kHz.

The later AIX-SW version (quake.sw) was rather faster than xquake at single pixel rendering, but still not great fun to play. Pixel-doubling was not appreciably worse and I think there is some special acceleration in this version (it included its own libXext.a for this purpose), though it made the sound worse.

Since I would consider this the absolute low-end, I think anything even marginally above this would play these games pretty well. I'll try them on the Apple Network Server later (it does not have UMS, and I'm leery of installing it from an IBM package because I've fried Harpoon AIX doing that before, but xquake at least may still run). I don't have the ANS configured for CDE right now, though.

But, for this machine, I put actions into CDE's applications manager and now I can launch them and play games. Which is exactly what you have a rare incredibly expensive computer like this for!

The ANS is the spare system for when the POWER6 goes down, so I'd rather not mess with what's on there right now. I could dig out another drive and install AIX on that for playing around with but it's a matter of getting a round tuit.

I wouldn't conclude that, necessarily. The ThinkPad I ran it on is particularly compromised in the CPU and RAM department. As I said, any system with marginally better specs should run those games pretty well given that they weren't utterly unplayable even on this machine.

AIX was never a great workstation OS, but IBM's attempts with Ultimedia and graphics hardware demonstrate the situation wasn't hopeless at least in the AIX 4 days (it only started becoming hopeless with 5L).

We could still play! Come on!Don't worry, Quake runs horribly on my POWER5 as well. I get 20ish fps at 320x240 and if I make the screen bigger it runs at 1 fps and the mouse cursor freezes. It's more of a science experiment than anything else. =) And that's on 5L. On 7 it doesn't run.

20fps on a POWER5?? Something's really wrong. My Quad G5 in software mode runs Quake at a ripping pace, so CPU rendering should not be the limiting factor. What does xdpyinfo say? Is the MIT-SHM extension installed? Is this xquake or quake.sw?

ClassicHasClass wrote:20fps on a POWER5?? Something's really wrong. My Quad G5 in software mode runs Quake at a ripping pace, so CPU rendering should not be the limiting factor. What does xdpyinfo say? Is the MIT-SHM extension installed? Is this xquake or quake.sw?

Was Quake ever fast on non x86 boxes? Even on my 300Mhz Octane its only playable in a tiny window in GL mode. A 300Mhz PC is way more than enough to run at high resolutions. Kind of disappointing that a once $30,000 system designed for 3d graphics can't run a game decently.

ClassicHasClass wrote:20fps on a POWER5?? Something's really wrong. My Quad G5 in software mode runs Quake at a ripping pace, so CPU rendering should not be the limiting factor. What does xdpyinfo say? Is the MIT-SHM extension installed? Is this xquake or quake.sw?

Was Quake ever fast on non x86 boxes? Even on my 300Mhz Octane its only playable in a tiny window in GL mode. A 300Mhz PC is way more than enough to run at high resolutions. Kind of disappointing that a once $30,000 system designed for 3d graphics can't run a game decently.

Hell yes. Our local Quake deathmatch group was the following machines:

iBook G3/266 (800x600)PowerBook 1400 (G3/466) -- which rendered in software to boot, it has no 3D acceleration (800x600)Power Mac 7300 (G4/800) -- which was the server, also (832x624)iMac G4/1.0GHz (1024x768)Quad G5 (whatever the heck size window I wanted)

These were all running GLQuake with the exception of the 1400, and there's not an x86 in the crowd. Carmack even wrote a bytecode JIT specifically for PowerPC for Quake 3, which I regularly played on a 450MHz G4.